nickyboy
Norven Mankey
- Location
- You want hills? We got hills
I think that's over-stating it somewhat. We do have suitable topography but it's largely confined to North Wales, the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District, the Forest of Bowland and the North Pennines AONB. Arguably, there's some race logistics difficulty in all of those since the 'good roads' tend to be single track, though that shouldn't be a show-stopper. Tuesday's stage is pretty good in terms of distance to climb ratio, and some of the climbs are relatively long, albeit not properly mountainous, and that's taking the big roads, not the nearby smaller, steeper options. It seems to me, taking Sunday's stage as an example, that the T of B seems to often favour 'big' roads at the expense of nearby, more interesting, hillier terrain.
I'm not sure how the route is determined but it would have been really easy to make Stage 8 much harder. For example, they go from Marple to Uppermill via the easiest possible route (except the climb up Werneth Low). By adding only an extra 10 miles or so you could have routed via Holme Moss and Wessenden Head which are both hard. That stage starts in Altrincham and finishes in Manchester. It would be very easy to design a real tough day out. Do the towns that the route goes through pay anything for the privilege?